New first floor...

Not first story, that's a little optimistic, just the floor. The part you walk on.

Last week it looked like this, the first floor was in the basement, and unless you wanted to practice your joist walking skills then you were best off elsewhere. Luckily we are blessed with a crew of superlative balancers, and now it looks like this:That divide is where the new first floor from the original part of the house meets the old floor from the addition. The new floor was framed with 2x12's and the old floor was framed with 2x6's, so this involved jacking the addition up 6 inches so that there's not a 6" drop between the two sections.

See the board running around the bottom of the house? That's the elevator board.

Rumor has it that now that the first story is in order (mostly, there's still some leveling going on) that we will start to frame the second story.

You can see some of the new framing here. The northwall had to be rebuilt because of the chimney, which was holding moisture against the wall, so the wood behind it was basically nonexistent (remember our upstairs closet with the skylight?). The odd corner sticking up on the left side of the picture is where the electrical service is attached, so we are working around it for the time being. I went down to the code office to get an electrical permit last week, so we will be installing a new mast soon (today? tomorrow?) so that the electrical can have a more secure place to hang out.

We also have new window openings cut in the foundation for the basement, and framed into the upstairs walls, so things are definitely coming together more than they are coming apart. This is quite an exciting turning point!